Month: February 2010

There is no there there. The room is here

and they live inside it. The ceiling seems

the loneliest place of all, a barren land

where a spider nests in a corner

and the music of dried insect shells

tingles in its threads. The walls

act as four barriers to the outside.

Each muffles the shuffling of feet and

the flapping of wings until living seems

swallowed in white plaster tombs.

She sits here, her hair is straight

and brown and it hangs down

into the roots of an elm tree, these roots spreading

sideways. The window thick with ice, rots

in its frame, and a child sleeps steadily

inside the room, next to her, inside

secret dreams. In her dream she cast spells

on an electric guitar. Like Jimi, in black feathers,

she blows the amp and crowd’s eardrums off.

She played that song of wind and snow, wordless

pine green shadows and icy blues, winter leaves

of dead summers. There is no there here. She knows

this. Her child sleeps. The room is here

and they live inside it. The cord connected

to the lamp on the table gives weak light.

Her child smiles at nothing. Then he screams.

It’s early afternoon Sunday. My 7-year old son and I are parked at a local café. He’s happy with his purple Tootsie pop and I’m happy with my cappuccino frothing over in a black ceramic mug. He’s drawing elaborate houses in his Gomi Taro Scribbles book. Occasionally, I am asked to draw specific appliances and furniture through his windows, but otherwise we are each busy with our singular tasks of the heart.

Days like this are days of bliss, and, yes, the sprinkle donut in my mouth helps a lot, as does having my goofy little son with me (who’s looking especially goofy since he lost his second front tooth yesterday). Days like this can be dangerous, too, because I have the time to question why I’ve caved into the social-pressurized game of keeping a full-time job. Why do I and most people I know spend our waking lives away from the people we love the most? It seems a sad and weird way to live, but society has a way of making the sad and weird seem “normal.”

I have played this 9-to-5 game for over three years—a world’s record for nomadic me—because of my family’s current situation: there’s rent to pay, gas to pump into the rusty Toyota (whose back bumper has begun to frown on one side), and most importantly for us, monthly government fees paid so my son has access to the services he needs for his disability (which my employer’s health insurance ironically excludes), and, of course, there’s the desire for a bit of pocket cash to buy an occasional cappuccino such as the one I am sipping right now, so that I can pretend I am royalty.  So, the full-time game I play, but then I also must ask how can I make this life choice more palatable, more enjoyable, more creative, so that I don’t feel trapped, suffocated, and dead inside?

One shared goal of my co-conspirator—K—and I has been to carve a creative life outside of our work and outside of our household duties—to create snippets of constructive dream time when (instead of complaining by the water cooler or devouring frosted cookies in the office kitchenette/washing dishes or getting flu shots) we can reclaim and develop our creative selves as writers, as artists,  as humans with a sense of mission. We want to encourage the other to Fly! Leap! Swim! Run!…toward our better selves.

I spend so much time in a land of conformity, inside the building of same-old, same-old, that I could despair (and I have). But it’s better for me, and for planet earth, when I instead focus my energies on rejuvenating my soul through that ongoing difficult, but rewarding process of being true to myself!

For me, writing is like a warm coat I’d pull over my frame before heading out into a blizzard. Or it’s like wearing an unraveling, old sweater stitched with dreams and secret tasks as I step through the portal of the office each day. It’s a swaying, creaking pine tree to climb to reach a state of mind where I am out on a limb, where risk is involved. I want to sing songs about what’s deeply part of my skeletal, molecular self. What’s the point of building a nest, birds, if we can’t rest in it?